Martin Newman, CEO – Practicology

Martin Newman, CEO – Practicology

Putting the customer first, irrespective of channel. That will be the key message delivered by Martin Newman, CEO – Practicology, during his presentation at this year’s summit. We asked him to tell us a little more…

We’re looking at what electrical retailers can learn from other sectors and how they can organise their systems, people and processes to put the customer at the heart of all they do. During my session, retailers will learn both strategic and more practical tactical opportunities to apply to their businesses to improve business performance.

How is multi-channel strategy evolving in the TCG retail sector and what’s at stake for those who lag behind?As is the case in pretty much all retail sectors, consumers expect to have a seamless joined up customer journey. That means buying from the channel of choice and order fulfilment from the channel of choice. Customers want to be in control of their journey. They want their orders when and where they choose and retailers who can’t keep up and can’t offer that value proposition will find themselves quickly becoming irrelevant for their customers.

What kinds of things can be changed within ecommerce teams to enable them to perform better? Ecommerce teams need retailers running their teams. By that I mean people with trading experience. Lots of heads of ecommerce are technically proficient, but don’t have the trading mentality of a store manager. Other gaps are often around analytics and insight. If you don’t have insight then how do you know what’s working and what isn’t? And what you should do more or less of. Two other areas that often lack the appropriate focus or capabilities are conversion optimisation, and retention marketing. The former are those who job it is to continually test and learn and drive up conversion. The latter is about building customer engagement and propensity to buy. eCRM and CRM are the core drivers for this. Retailers tend to focus too much on getting people through the door or onto the site, and not enough on bringing them back.

How critical is the “user experience”, and what are the main “make or break” factors here?User experience is everything. Break points include not being able to buy in the channel of choice, not being able to have my order fulfilled when and where I want, and not being able to return my order to the retailer’s store.